Earlier this spring, I attended a mindfulness retreat that I have gone to every year for the past 15 or 16 years. It lasts about 5 days, is a silent retreat, and largely involves sitting and walking meditation practice from a zen perspective. Although there is mostly no talking, someone gives a talk in the morning, and there’s a question and answer period in the afternoon. The retreat is held in the desert, so the weather is normally beautiful, particularly compared to the way it is in the Metro Vancouver area this time of year. This time, it was even hotter than usual, and unfortunately, the folks organizing the retreat did not know how to turn on the air conditioning in the meditation room. As a result, the room steadily warmed throughout the first evening to a peak of about 87 F. It was nearly unbearable to sit and meditate for so long in that heat. Hot yoga might be OK, but I can tell you that hot meditation is not! This problem, of course, could have been solved very quickly had we been able to talk, figure out where the A/C remote was, and so forth.
It occurred to me, as I was sitting there, that talking is a tool, much like a wrench, hammer, and so on. Talking helps us solve problems, fix things, get people (or animals/pets) to do things, and bond with others. As I’ve discovered through so many of these retreats, it’s not always necessary to use this tool of talking. Sometimes, you can get by just fine in silence. You might be thinking it would be impossible to have a relationship with someone if you’re silent. Indeed, talking is often a tool used to connect with others, but one of the first things I noticed when I attended my first retreat was that I felt connected with the other attendees even though nobody was talking. Somehow, just being around these people I didn’t know very well, going through the same thing together, was enough to foster a sense of closeness and connection. And, when we started talking again, I didn’t feel any closer or more connected than I had before (in some cases, I felt less connected!). We use the tool of talking reflexively to accomplish so many things, but it’s not always entirely necessary. Further, sometimes all of this talking we do so automatically simply makes things worse, as I notice nearly every day at the dinner table when my sons get into debates about seemingly meaningless details (what happened in a show, what the martial arts instructor actually said about photo day, the merits or features of particular video games, and the list could go on and on). I also have this experience when I attend faculty meetings, and we talk and talk about things we’ve talked and talked about for years.
As I sat for a few days and tried to gently guide my mind back to the present moment whenever I jumped on the thought train, I started to think of thinking as a tool as well. Thinking is a lot like talking. It helps us work things out, solve problems, plan ahead, remember things, and so on. Just like talking, however, thinking is not always necessary. We use the tool of thinking reflexively and automatically throughout the day, often without even realizing it. There are almost always thoughts running through our minds. The goal of meditation practice is not to get rid of thoughts, but rather, to practice experiencing the present moment, thoughts or no thoughts. One insight that came to me in this practice is how unnecessary thinking is for many of the things we do on a regular basis. Do we really need to think to brush our teeth, eat food, make our way from place to place, drive, get on the bus, or even hold a conversation with someone? After a few days of trying to avoid getting stuck in my thoughts, it dawned on me that we all probably do a ton of unnecessary thinking. I know from experience that it’s quite possible to stop talking, but if talking is a lot like thinking, why is it so hard to stop thinking, even when we desperately want to (e.g., when we’re stuck in rumination or worry thoughts)? The research says that attempts to suppress or avoid thoughts are doomed to failure, and that the best we can do is distract ourselves from our thoughts, guide our attention away from thoughts to the experiences of the present moment (e.g., sensations of our emotional states, or other sensations, such as sights, sounds and so on), or try to work with our thoughts and put them to rest in various ways. If we can simply stop or avoid talking when necessary (such as when we’re at a silent retreat), why can’t we simply stop thinking? I’m starting to believe that we can, but that it takes time and a lot of practice, and I’ll discuss this in a future blog. ~ Alexander L. Chapman, Ph.D., R.Psych.